Every now and then I want to say: Forget me! This is the blog one should be  following
!
http://theanimalarium.blogspot.ca/

No...I haven't been thinking lately...I'm sorry blog...but I couldn't resist this one. A friend told me about Christmas oreos filled with candy cane filling...I'm thinking of doing some still life's...or is that still lives?

This is Jasper, otherwise known as the dude! He has been featured in my blog before. My friend's daughter sent him up from Halifax to be with my friend during a terrible illness. That was a gift of love.  Jasper has done his job.
So the fact that Jasper's favourite perch when he isn't outside teasing the dogs next door who are behind an electric invisible fence is on the family laptop is no surprise. This is a very smart cat. He knows a warm spot when he feels one.

However, it doesn't matter to Jasper whether the computer is closed or open. When my friend went to use her computer she realized with horror that yes, Jasper had been sitting on it and now the screen was upside down to the keyboard. Everything was a mirror image.
       My friend's husband shrugged and said: "Now you've done it!" The object of the comment was left in doubt.
       One could explain how my friend solved the problem but suffice it to say that she had help from expert relatives. What did she do? Why she pressed Control/Alt/Up Arrow of course which reversed the action Jasper had taken when he pressed Control/Alt/Down Arrow!



 A Stop Gap whilst I gather my thoughts!

I was visiting last night. A young teacher commented on the fact that in her school, the teachers did not make eye contact in the halls.

The matter of the teachers walking in the hallway not making eye contact triggered something in me. One has to be really careful about nostalgia…it creeps in and the realism is lost.

But I think the difference is in modern leadership models there seems to be a fear of sharing! Teachers should acknowledge each other in the hallways. That’s a model for students. As a staff we met often, squabbled often, disagreed often…but we felt valued…and we could laugh as I did last night at the differences.

Because of all the rules and paper work and whatever, administration doesn’t have time for the teachers and teachers have become the bottom feeders…

When I left teaching, I left because I could, because the stuff outside the classroom became too much to handle, because I had to a great extent lost my freedom…and my identity outside the classroom.

The students at John Rennie knew that although we had very different personalities and agendas, the staff knew and supported each other. We made eye contact in the halls no matter what! And we made eye contact with the students even if we didn’t know them…we were a part of the same community.

 

This is just to say that I have survived the worst and am still in one piece. "The worst" is so relative! I survived that which I have been waiting for - the crash of my beloved computer...facilitated by dropping it on the floor! And within two hours, I am up and running and found this blog! I was afraid I had lost my blog! I hadn't!

And my mother's words ring out: This too will pass!

I've been thinking of Joan lately. Joan was a really neat lady who died much too young. I realize that I do believe in the presence of people who have left. Am I being euphemistic? No...that's the way I think of them. They pass by on occasion and I don't know whether I generate the energy or they generate the energy but they pass by.

In going through my photos I thought of Joan. She had a condition or experience known as synestheia. A neurological condition that mixes up the five senses of touch, taste, hearing, smell and vision. People with this condition may hear colors and see sounds.  The example I always remember is that of a blue buzz...
    Joan had this from a very early age but was told that she shouldn't speak of it because it seemed like a disease. I think of it as a gift.
Joan was an artist with a passion for calligraphy. She named her son, Theo, a Van Gogh connection which isn't surprising when one thinks of his art...
                 And when I looked up Van Gogh, I found the following. Van Gogh too was said to experience synestheia.
                 "Van Gogh did not paint what he saw with his eyes. He painted what he felt with his eyes."
                  And another entry: French compose Oliver Messiaen experienced synestheia. According to Simon Rattle, conductor Andre Previn once asked the complase about a rehearsal performance of Tarangulila. Messaen confusingly replied, "Just play it a little more orangey-green."
                  There's where I want to reach up or out and ask Joan, "What do you think?"

Why not? Yesterday it was green berries...today...the obvious!

I was with a group last night. We are of an age where we are dealing with or have dealt with aging parents. I have a line up of three friends who are to tell me when I should go into a seniors' home. One is a knock over - I would ask her first. (Is it time yet?) She's just too nice. Alas, the other two are not so easy! And unfortunately they have gotten together to discuss me...or so they say...
The problem is that any of  us who have been through the situation know that it is important to make such a decision before we have to.
I just found this email bit...

The Bathtub Test

During a visit to my doctor, I asked him, "How do you determine whether or not an older person should be put in an old age home?"
"Well," he said, "we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the person to empty the bathtub."
"Oh, I understand," I said. "A normal person would use the bucket because it is bigger than the spoon or the teacup."
"No" he said. "A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?"

Yupp! More green berries! That's the theme for today. I see all these people walking around with devices sitting on their ears...blue rays? And they are all talking. And I wonder if they are actually talking to anyone or just pretending to be popular. They could be...talking to the air. I think they should talk to their dog or the baby they are walking...that's what I think...

But then if I had one of those devices I would want it as a recorder. So many thoughts float through my head and I have trouble catching them...they were absolutely brilliant at that moment...but...they are gone! All gone

Or perhaps there could be a telephone answering service to catch stray thoughts...that would be neat!

Observation of the day  - nothing profound- just an excuse to show these pictures which I like. One knows whether one's cat is ill or simply under the weather with the Friskie Temptations test. My cat is simply under the weather!

Reminder to Pat

Beware of becoming rigid!

Returning from my first gentle yoga class (Carrying my brand new pink mat) I met a young man in the park walking dogs...beautifully behaved dogs of various sorts. He was shaking his head. A woman had come up to him and said: You know in Westmount you are only allowed two dogs!

The crunch was that he added: I think she came from the same yoga class as you.

And that is why I resist writing letters to the Westmount Examiner about the behaviour of cyclists!

Later I found these flowers and a passer by said: Feel them! They're wonderful! She was right! I had never thought of feeling flowers!

Drunken bees and floppy flowers!
It's Fall!

T.S Eliot was right:

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games...

Let me introduce Balthasar. There is nothing quite like a black and white cat.  Balthasar wears a bell, a bell that he uses to make a point. His owner claims that when she calls, he may or may not come, but he always rings his bell. Balthasar walked with me in the garden and his bell rang constantly.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
                                                                           Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

 

I'm going through the trauma of changing computers...traumatic because change is change and because I have to  actually review my files to see what is worth keeping...

I found the following - naturally I wrote an official recommendation as well

Dear Mr. Sears:


This is to inform you that my former student, Harry Smith ain’t no criminal. I taught him for two years already and he never stole nothing from me – nor (far as I can figure out) from anyone associated with me…well maybe a pencil here and there for math…but that could be considered as aiding the cause of his education.

Anyway,s as far as I know, none of his family stole anything either. In fact, I taught his brother, Billy. Billy was always returning things that other people stole. His parents are also good people – they’re Americans – but that shouldn’t count ‘cause really only the president, Mr. Reagan can be considered a thief down there. He robs from the poor to give to the rich…or something like that. Anyways, Harry wrote good and never got in any fights or anything so I think he’s quite qualified to throw things around in your warehouse.

In face, I’d bet my bottom dollar on Harry…unless he’s changed a lot since he went to Russia…but that was only for six weeks, this summer and he brought back all the jeans he took over so I don’t think he was doing any dealing on the Black Market…or anything like that.

Anyways, you’d better hire the kid ‘cause now I’m getting quite fervent and if you don’t hire him, I’ll take it as a personal insult to me and I’ll tell everyone not to buy things at Sears…do you hear me?

Someone asked me to write about photography. I wrote 1000 words. I liked what I wrote. But someone said that they were thinking more along the line of 130 words! And so I chopped to 500 words...but someone can count, so I chopped to 150 words and said: That's it. One more tone and someone might as well just say: She takes pictures. She's not a photographer but she takes pictures!

Here's my 150 words:
My first camera was a Nikormat with a macro lens. For years I took pictures of flowers. The macro did the work.


And then I retired and although my beloved Nikormat still worked, my eyes didn’t. So I borrowed a camera and took pictures of Mont St. Michel.

Africa is not really the place for a macro lens. There was a sign at our compound: Caution: Wild Animals are dangerous. Please do not wander from the Pathways. So I used a Fuji digital from the safety of an SUV.

In Manning Park I swapped the Fuji for an Olympus. How can one go wrong with snow-capped mountains, fir trees, ravens and Alpine meadows? I carried a bear bell.

In France I learned about skies. In Newfoundland I learned about horizons…although the lupines were irresistible.

Recently I bought a CannonS100, a camera I could tuck in my pocket. I miss my Nikormat!

We shall not cease from exploration
   And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive at where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot

You say I am mysterious.
Let me explain myself:
In a land of oranges
I am faithful to apples.

And I thought the following was about bags...but it wasn't!

The Term


A rumpled sheet
Of brown paper
About the length

And apparent bulk
Of a man was
Rolling with the

Wind slowly over
And over in
The street as

A car drove down
Upon it and
Crushed it to

The ground. Unlike
A man it rose
Again rolling

With the wind over
And over to be as
It was before.

William Carlos Williams

Dear copywrite...copyright...people...don't get angry with me! I only have a few followers. It's mostly me...and I just can't resist. I never got over my Richard Brautigan phase and when I saw my poem of the day email, my memories flooded back.

Big Game


by Brenda Shaughnessy
—after Richard Brautigan's "A Candlelion Poem"



What began as wildfire ends up
on a candle wick. In reverse,
it is contained,

a lion head in a hunter's den.
Big Game.

Bigger than one I played
with matches and twigs and glass
in the shade.

When I was young, there was no sun
and I was afraid.

Now, in grownhood, I call the ghost
to my fragile table, my fleshy supper,
my tiny flame.

Not just any old, but THE ghost,
the last one I will be,

the future me,
finally the sharpest knife
in the drawer.

The pride is proud.
The crowd is loud, like garbage dumping

or how a brown bag ripping
sounds like a shout
that tells the town the house

is burning down.
Drowns out some small folded breath

of otherlife: O that of a lioness licking her cubs to sleep in a dream of
savage gold.

O that roaring, not yet and yet
and not yet dead.

So many fires start in my head.


And this is the Brautigan poem:

A CandleLion Poem


and our graves will
turn a Candle inside out be like two lovers washing
and you’ve got the smallest their clothes together
portion of a lion standing in a laundromat.
there at the edge of the shadows.

I went to a country fair this weekend. All the poultry turned their...tails!

Remember: This is my repository of pictures such as this one which best captures the feeling of this summer - it has been a yellow golden summer.

This is my repository of fragments such as the following:

Question: What are some of the responses one can be asked for when dealing with a text?

Answer: Let us work with a simple TEXT: I NEED A HAIRCUT

Types of Response:

-Analysis of the Idea: The author admits openly to her insecurity and sees as symbolic of this insecurity the need for a haircut.

-Review: The potential for plot on the topic of haircuts is rather limited however…

-Extension/Application: I too need a haircut.

-Interpretive: The motif of shorn tresses recurs throughout the “novel” and thus suggests the insecurity of the author.

-Report: She says she needs a haircut

My point? Students need to know to distinguish between various responses for exam purposes. If one uses this type of exercise, there is no right answer and therefore the skill rather than the correctness of the answer is what is being emphasized.

On the Edge

It happened again and so I'm going to write about it. I forget who and where...which is a bit ironic...but someone recently said to me: I remember when you put that note up on your mother's wall...
   My mother suffered from a gentle dementia...she always knew the date....she always knew who was prime minister...she always claimed to be fifty which I found unfair...I said: No mother...I'm older than fifty so you can't be fifty...I'm your daughter.
    She would just laugh...
    It seemed so important to me...

    The one aspect of her dementia which caused her dismay was that she every now and then would look for her mother...granny...
     And so I put a note up on her wall...above the telephone...Granny is dead.
That was all she needed...
But when she had visitors, she would take the note down - it wasn't seeming...seemingly...
How astonishing the human mind is.

A friend told me of his mother who fretted about what had happened to her house. And so he took a lesson from me and put up a note: The house  is sold...
But he couldn't resist homage to the original: And granny is dead.

When he next went to visit his mother, he asked if the note worked.
His mother said: Oh yes...when I worry I just look at the note...and I remember that the house is sold...
My friend smiled but before he could on, his mother continued: But I didn't know granny was dead!

One year the income tax people came after my mother for not declaring that she was living with someone. I wasn't impressed. I had already found the culprit. I had found the registration paper for the Referendum. My mother had convinced the people who came around that she lived with my grandmother. They even had the date of my grandmother's birth...1883. That would have made my grandmother 113 at the time of the referendum...no one bothered to count.

I went to the government offices and the woman in charge peered at me over her computer as I gave her my grandmother's name...and sure enough, she had the grace to blush! They were trying to catch my mother out for harbouring a 113 year-old tenant.

Note: This picture? It's not an airplane...it's a dragonfly!!!

Yeah! The Ikea Catalogue has come! A picture book forever! My life is complete...save for this stolen photograph....I would have liked to have been there!

Ok here's what I really wanted to say. One has to be so careful of becoming the victim of criteria.  My friend's four-year-old son took up cooking. He and his mom made vegetable soup. After the obvious ingredients, she said to him: Now what?

And he replied: Worcester sauce!

And he was right...
And now whenever I make bland soup, I just add Worcester sauce.

I said to him in a pathetically condescending voice: Ah now you'll be able to cook for yourself and make a recipe book.

He looked at me, scrunched up his shoulders and said: I have to learn to read and write first!

I wasn't phased. Hey! you could make a picture cook book and draw the ingredients.

He smiled and left to watch his cartoons!



 I'm thinking about criteria...they were the answer to the empowerment of a student. If we told them the criteria, they would know what to do. They could self-edit...

The problem is that the criteria have become the be-all and the end-all. I wonder what criteria Joe Fafard used to create these wonderful sculptures. Did he have a list to check off or did he just create?

Wait...he learned and experimented and created...perhaps there were criteria to begin with but no criteria to end with.

We must facilitate their moment of glory...that is what  teaching is all about...I think.

We can’t all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as we go by.

Writing, in itself, is like the sound of one hand clapping - incomplete, silent, and without impact. Only when the writer as the one hand, and the reader as the other, confront each other is there that clap, that spark of communication which makes literature alive. Ming Fong Ho

I use this blog as a place keeper for the bits and pieces of my thinking...a sorter out.

I took part in a Bloomsday celebration in June...I keep calling it Bloomsberry...I was asked for a brief biography:

Pat does have some claim to a vein of Irish blood. However when she made good on that claim, she understood the advice of her four foot-five Irish grandmother who had sat in the corner of the living room for all of her growing up and had made sense of the world for her. “Stay in the background and push.”


She met a young man from her grandmother’s hometown of Castle Rock, Northern Ireland - near the Giant’s Causeway - and announced with pride that her great aunts were the postmistresses of said town carrying on a three-generation tradition.

His reply: Ah yes- those are the two elderly ladies who look into people’s windows with telescopes…we all know them!

Pat returned to Canada and became a teacher happily staying in the background and pushing.

This is the local book store cat...I'm just using it as a place keeper.

I don't think I've included this story before. It is yet another example of my pettiness! A friend sent it to me and all I could think was: I wish they would make a pair of red sandals in size eleven which the possibility of including my orthodics in them! Mind you, my friend and I have discussed the fact that I am short with long feet and she is tall with short feet and I have more chance of keeping my balance.

They were so pretty... bright red sandals. Strappy, with a soft red sole. They were perky and full of fun. They said, "come walk with us. It's very warm today and those black sneakers will be much too hot."


So the woman put them on and admired how small and neat they made her feet look. She smiled and set off on her morning mile hike. Afterwards she inspected the gardens and the greenery had grown during the night. The contrast with her pretty red sandals was very flattering.

And then, she went indoors.


She tried to remove the pretty red sandals. They stuck to her feet. She finally peeled one off and gratefully settled her bare foot on the cool hardwood floor. But...horrors! A blood red imprint of her foot appeared. On examination, the entire foot had been stained a deep,deep red.

Gingerly, she removed the other shoe. Bingo! Blood red foot. Walking precariously on the very back of her heels (which was the only place not red), she made her way to the tub.

Fifteen minutes of hard scrubbing with pumice stone and exfoliating salt and soap later, her feet were now only a pale pink version of their former selves. But the red dye swirled down the drain and stained the tub mat.

All that remained was to remove the bloody red evidence from the floor before the CSI team was called to investigate.....

The shoes went into the garbage. The woman went and retrieved her sneakers.

I have struggled all my life with only-child-pettiness. I thought I had conquered the concept of wanting everything I like to be mine. I haven't. A friend sent me this wonderful picture and all I could think was - That's not fair...two raccoons beat a sleeping squirrel  seen through the screen any day!

It's not my parents' fault. I know that but I would have been better able to face disappointment if I had had a sibling who demanded equal bragging rights!

Of course he's pleased. He doesn't have to share his toys or his human and his eyes match the wall! She painted it with him in mind!

Did I mention that Mogs was delighted?

Just came home from a walk in the woods to find a cryptic email: Lebowski is Fred. Lebowski was a rescued cat who after vet bills of untold proportions was brought home and integrated into the house with Mogs. Alas as the email says - Lebowski didn't need rescuing. He had a home. Fortunately his original owners were thrilled that he had been fixed.
    All of which is to say that trees don't run away from home...

The pleasure about living on the third floor is that one can photograph squirrels napping in one's tree!

I found a new word:

Chirality: Not superimposable on its mirror image also called handedness...

Now I have to figure out a metaphoric use for it!

Sound Advice:
If you go to the ocean and you see a lot of bubbles and fish jumping out of the water, more than like there's a shark and you should just get out of the water. It's common sense.

This is Tristan, a sixteen-year-old silver tipped Persian from Hungary whose only wish is to be loved and loved and loved...I felt he should be acknowledged!

I am a collector of fragments. I have no idea where this one came from but it was too rich not to note!

The face of the pear-shaped man reminded me of the mashed turnips that Aunt Mildred used to serve alongside the Thanksgiving turkey. As he got out of the strawberry-hued car, his immense fists looked like two slabs of slightly gnawed ham. He waddled over to the counter and snarled at me under his lasagna-laden breath. “Something, my little bonbon, is fishy in Denmark.”


Slowly I lowered my grilled cheese sandwich…”

The whole of Montreal is on the fringe...at the mercy of young idealists who think that Charest is a misguided father...and no misguided father would discipline with police...

Charest is not my father...he is an elected official serving the majority...I am in the majority...I want police protection.

I have been on strike.
I have demonstrated.
I have never thrown billiard balls.
I have never broken windows and vandalized buildings.

I am terrified at the moment...not for my safety...but of the fact innocence has been lost to idealism.

The parents of these young leaders knew the value of a good education. They paid for their children to have the best.

It was money ill-spent.

A most wonderful blog that I forgot about!

http://theanimalarium.blogspot.ca/

How could I not mention Meryl, Amber's buddy, whose joy in life is to lie on the path and eat sticks.

Last night I was up on the mountain and I saw a very large raccoon eating a very large home baked loaf of bread. He was out in the open at the edge of the parking lot. Three hours later I returned and he was still there. It evidently takes a long time for a raccoon to eat a loaf of bread...

This is not a raccoon. Naturally I didn't have my camera with me when I should have. This is Amber whom I also met on a different part of the mountain. She is a Cairn terrier and proud of it!

Dear Diary!

This too will pass.
If it's not broken, don't fix it!
What am I? Chopped liver?

It's been a rough five days but nothing compared to the five days that others have experienced...

I keep telling myself that...and it's true...and...thank goodness for these wonderful bird houses on Sherbrooke Street. I've been meaning to take this picture forever.

I can't wait to get back up the mountain to check out the trilliums...

There's something else I wanted to say...but...I forgot! It will come back to me.

Faking it!

For my first five years of piano lessons, I learned the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata and the scales of C Major and G Major. I loved the Moonlight...I could put on the pedal and experience Irish melancholy at its best. My piano teacher was very sweet and cookies and milk were always present.

And then my mother's friend came back from Australia.When I think about it, I suspect my mother was gleefully waiting for her return.


I played the Moonlight Sonata, first movement, pedal on and tumbled into seven years of Toronto Conservatory Exams!

According to my mother's friend, that was the fastest way for me to catch up.


Much later, I spent time with a Jungian therapist. She was very good for me. She wasn't there to tell me what was wrong. She told me what was right. The only problem was that Jungians like to work with dreams and I wasn't dreaming...not a single dream in nine months. I felt badly. I felt dull. And so I stole a dream- one my friend related to me. My therapist was delighted. The minute I graduated from therapy, I started dreaming.  I haven't stopped since.

My most recent experience of faking it was at my check up. 
As I lay on his table, my doctor said: Blood pressure fine. Blood tests fine. Any complaints...
And I admitted to a hacking cough.
Do you have a post nasal drip?
Of course, all my friends do - it's a part of aging!
And do you all have medical degrees?

Silence

Here's a prescription for Nasonex. Now get on the scales!
The Nasonex was a brilliant idea.